IDRC in the News — January 2012

09/01/2012

IDRC’s founding president, W. David Hopper, was remembered as a visionary who pioneered a new approach to international development in obituaries published in The Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Western Producer. An agricultural economist, Mr Hopper, who passed away in late November, recognized that with the creation of IDRC, Canada was at “the vanguard of a new style of international operations,” one that encouraged collaboration with developing-country partners in supporting research for development. Former IDRC president Maureen O’Neil spoke to Masala Canada about David Hopper’s lasting legacy at IDRC.

IDRC Research Awardee Daniel Norfolk recently published a working paper on the Institute of South Asia Studies website. Norfolk’s research states that India, one of Afghanistan’s noted development partners, is reassessing its interests in the region. Without regional cooperation, particularly with Pakistan, India may struggle to meet its goals in Afghanistan.

Seven Latin American countries are using a new mathematical model to predict the financial costs to governments of smoking and smoking cessation treatments.A team of 26 researchers from across the continent developed the microsimulation health economic model. The team was led by an IDRC grantee, the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy, in Buenos Aires. Read an abstract of this study in the online medical journal, Value in Health. The work was also featured in Agencia Cyta, and republished in Rosario3.com,Jujuy, and Ediciones Médicas.

Community health workers in Rwanda are able to provide more organized services by using mobile technology. Using an electronic medical record system can allow the workers to better manage continuing healthcare, and more easily track the distribution and stock of medications. IDRC grantee Richard Gakuba, director of eHealth in Rwanda's Ministry of Health, spoke to Radio France International - English Service about how information technology is improving Rwanda’s health systems.

Increasing women's access to land and water is good way to also increase food security in the Sahel, said Kathryn Touré, IDRC’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa. Touré was speaking at a national workshop held in Dakar, Senegal, that was organized by IDRC in partnership with the African Network for Integrated Development.Research findings on women’s economic rights in the Sahel were the subject of the workshop and an article published online by Le Sud Quotidien.

The University of Regina launched a five-year project that will study how climate change will affect the Canadian Prairies, especially agricultural and indigenous communities. It is part of an international project funded through the IDRC-supported International Research Initiative on Adaptation to Climate Change. Canadian and Latin American researchers are teaming up to examine how vulnerable people and regions can adapt to climate change and extreme natural events such as flooding or drought. This project was featured on The Canadian Farm Business Management Centre’s website.